B.C. education ranked third in the world

Despite the ongoing failings in the current teachers’ strike, British Columbia is ranked first in Canada when it comes to education and is only behind Finland and Japan among peer countries.

The Conference Board of Canada has released its first report card and British Columbia was revealed to be the top-ranking province on education and skills.

British Columbia falls ahead of Canadian provinces Ontario and Alberta and places third overall behind Japan and Finland respectively on the world scale. These two countries were used as benchmark comparisons for the study.

“British Columbia is at the head of the Canadian class and among the top performers in the world,” said Michael Bloom, Vice-President, Industry and Business Strategy. “However, there are areas that require improvement for B.C. to fully capitalize on the talents of its students and workers.”

B.C. excels at high school diploma attainment, with 91 per cent of people aged 25 to 64 being high school graduates. B.C. was also graded well on college and university attainment, earning an “A” and “B” grade for each category, respectively.

Relatively few B.C. students have “inadequate” reading, math or science skills according to the report, with the province receiving a “B” grade across all three categories.

Among the province’s weaker areas include the numbers of PhD graduates and graduates in the fields of science, math, computer science and engineering. The province also received a “C” grade for gender gap of men and women in post-secondary institutions. This gap is prevalent across the country with 10 provinces featuring a gender gap that favours women.

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